


porcelain

by macabre



Series: elemental [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Parent Tony Stark, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark-centric, Tony adopts Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 09:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18385955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: She constantly calls Tony a child of excess and Peter a child of absence. It makes Tony cringe every time. “He’s not used to having all of these things, and the things that he was offered in previous foster situations came at a price. You know this. Just be careful.”





	porcelain

Tony checks the room first - his bed, his closet, his bathroom. He even checks under the bed, as if the kid was five and not fifteen. He could ask FRIDAY to locate Peter for him, but it’s almost two in the morning and if Peter is asleep somewhere, he’d rather not wake him. He knows the kid is on the floor - FRIDAY assured him on his way home from the world’s longest stock meeting that Peter hadn’t left their personal floor.

Sighing, Tony heads into the kitchen. He makes just enough noise opening and shutting cabinets that if the kid is awake and wants some company, he’ll come out, but not so much noise that it’ll disturb him. Hopefully.

Tony stands there with the stupid sandwich in his hand, watching the hall that leads to the bedrooms. Nothing emerges from the dark. He takes one bite, then throws it in the trash. Immediately, a cold sweat breaks out on the back of his neck. He hopes that Peter didn’t see that - the kid always looks a little sick when Tony wastes any scrap of food. Last week, Tony went through the fridge to find plastic containers full of a single piece of broccoli or a piece of pizza no bigger than two bites left. 

He left them alone. When he checked yesterday, those items had been replaced with new containers of various amounts of leftovers. Peter saves Tony’s half drunk coffee too, and puts it in the fridge. One time Peter had taken a mug out and warmed it up for Tony as a kind gesture because the kid was too perfect, too nice, and Tony had to make enough of a face that now Peter doesn’t offer it anymore. He drinks the old coffee himself, or tries to. He made his own face when sipping on Tony’s dark roast. 

Instead of going to bed, Tony lies on the couch. Before Peter, he’d actually gotten better about having a somewhat regular sleep schedule in his own bed instead of the lab, but sleeping on the couch in the living room is a new way to ensure the kid will feel comfortable coming to him if he needs anything in the middle of the night.

FRIDAY wakes him up at 6 am. 

No sign of Peter, but there’s a blanket spread across his body that wasn’t there before. 

“Hey, Pete?” His back cracks as he stands. He walks to the boy’s room and sees him sitting on the floor in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. “Hey, kid. How you feeling this morning?”

Peter doesn’t turn to look at him, but he’s watching him wearily from the reflection in the glass. The kid often sits in front of the window, and Tony gets it. The view is spectacular, but to a kid like Peter it’s an opulent reminder of where he is now and where he came from. It’s a little worrying how often he sits there - sometimes Tony will sneak a glance at the camera in his room if FRIDAY tells him that’s what Peter is up to. Mostly because he can’t believe that a fifteen-year-old kid would sit so quietly and so still for so long, but he does.

It’s heart breaking.

Peter wrings his hands and hunches in on himself. He once shrugged at Tony in response to some inane question and then flinched back, as if he was going to be reprimanded. Peter in general is very concerned about seeming both obedient and timid. He never asks for anything, and he certainly won’t take anything without prompting. 

Happy and Pepper have both been trying to assist Tony in putting weight on the kid - he’s scarily thin, was that way when he came to live with them, but it’s a full time job asking Peter to eat, and because the therapist told Tony that establishing independence was crucial at this point, he will only ask so many times. 

“I’m gonna make some breakfast. Might use up some of the leftovers from Thursday,” Tony adds, just to make the kid feel better about eating. “How’s that sound?”

Peter nods, a small thing that Tony can only see in the window. From the back, Peter looks solid. Frozen. Rooted to the ground.

While emotional boundaries are something they’re working on, breaking down physical boundaries is another.

Tony slowly and gently approaches, putting a hand on the top of the kid’s head. He worries about it being too patronizing, so he slips the hand down to a shoulder and gives a squeeze. 

Peter tenses beneath him, but his face stays the same. 

“Fifteen minutes, okay?”

On the dot, Peter enters the kitchen fifteen minutes later. He’s swapped out sweats for some casual jeans and tee. It’s a new tee that Tony purchased him, he realizes, and he beams at the kid. Accepting gifts - another thing they’re working on. 

“Mr. Stark?”

“You can call me Tony whenever you’re ready, you know?”

Peter nods. “Are we going out today?”

“Pete, we can do whatever we want. They owe me, after yesterday.” It had been a truly brutal day. Tony winces, recalling the faces of the board members as he walked in the room. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, fostering a kid out of the blue will make others wonder about you. Even after, you know, Tony dropped that he was Iron Man unplanned onto the world, or every public appearance he’s had that has derailed spectacularly. 

“Do I -” Peter fidgets. He curls his hands up in his long sleeves - a habit Tony would have found annoying and childish on anyone else, but Peter just manages to pull his heartstrings every time. “Do I look okay?”

Tony very carefully and gently puts a plate of food in front of his kid and smiles. “Of course, Peter. You look great.”

Tony sits next to him at the informal island. They have yet to graduate to the dining room. Even Tony would feel weird eating in there. 

“It’s just that I know what I look like,” Peter says, his head ducked down low and a faint tinge to his cheeks. 

“Peter.”

“I know I don’t look like a kid that Tony Stark would chose,” he finishes, plucking at one sleeve from within another. 

“Peter. I did chose you.” 

His heart is sinking - it’s been almost a full month since Peter moved in, and every day feels like a marathon of assurances. Tony will do it - Peter is worth it - but in these moments he wonders when they will arrive. This poor kid who was never brought so low - he’s been dragged through it, year after year and never allowed to grow up and out of it - Tony will do everything he can, but he wonders if it will be enough.

Every day is another heartbreak waiting to happen.

It’s the best and worst decision Tony has ever made. 

“Peter, listen to me.” Tony very gently turns the chair the kid is sitting in to face him. Takes one sleeved hand in his own. “We don’t always get to chose our family. But in this case, I did. I chose you. You’re mine. And I’m yours. For as along as you want this.”

“But the adoption-”

“I don’t want you to worry about the legality of anything. I only want you to tell me if this doesn’t feel right, okay?”

Peter is frowning, his eyes are tearing up, and there’s a tendon sticking straight out in his neck. He looks simultaneously pissed and depressed. Which he is. But. It’s usually masked by such a look of indifference that the kid looks zombie-like wandering the halls. 

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you - I don’t think this will ever feel right.”

“Pete.”

“And I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, but nothing about living in a penthouse with a superhero will ever feel right or normal.”

The Tony before Peter would have run and hid in his lab for the next week, but he can’t do that anymore. Tony chose Peter. He chose him, and he chose this life. 

No accidents.

Still. He wants to collapse in on himself, head in hands, and just scream and cry. Much like Peter probably wants to. 

“Is it okay for me to hug you?” Tony opens his arms. Without looking up, Peter nods once. Immediately, Tony scoops him up, and they’re both out of their chairs, squeezing. Peter squeezes harder and harder, as if testing him. Testing that he’s real, testing that he won’t get yelled at - Tony’s not sure.

“You still want to be here, yes or no?”

There’s a horrible moment of hesitation, then, “Yes.”

“You’re happier here than being at the home, yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“You’re willing to put up with me, yes or no?”

A small laugh. A puff against Tony’s chest. “Yes. I think.”

“Kid, that’s as good as answer as I ever get.”

Tony pulls Peter from his chest and taps his chin to get him to look up at him. “I know it’s going to take time. As long as you’re willing to put it in, then we’re doing okay.”

Peter chews at his bottom lip. Tony can see the tear tracks down his face, but his eyes are already clearer. “Thank you, Tony.” 

It sounds so small coming from him, but it fills Tony to the brim. He pulls Peter in once more for a kiss on his head, then lets him go. Motions at him to eat while he hides his own tears. 

They’ve been keeping a low profile since Peter came to join him in the tower; Tony leaves for necessary meetings - whatever those actually are, according to Pepper - and Peter has slowly been exploring the different floors and their various offerings. At first it seemed too much for the kid - the in-house movie theater, the bowling alley to appease Clint, the different gyms. With each one Peter looked a little more sickly. 

They share a therapist now; Tony dropped his last one for now in favor of seeing Peter’s shrink as a form of bonding. The woman is kind of a stereotype for a pediatric psychiatrist - young, bright, and tremendously affirming. Peter was a little confused as to why Tony also had sessions with her to which he could only reply that she was much better suited to his intellect that others. Honestly, she does a good job at walking a line of still offering professional help but also peppering in information about Peter. 

She constantly calls Tony a child of excess and Peter a child of absence. It makes Tony cringe every time. “He’s not used to having all of these things, and the things that he was offered in previous foster situations came at a price. You know this. Just be careful.”

So Tony backed off with the gifts. He stockpiled them in different parts of the building, a growing inventory that Happy reluctantly oversees. For now, he sticks to some basics - new clothes, new foods for him to try. An occasional game that Tony thinks they can play together, or with Rhodey or Happy if they’re around.

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, Peter has a great poker face.

This wonderful kid who can wear his heart on his sleeve. He materializes in different places, much like some kind of haunting figure, leery and otherworldly. Tony finds him asleep in closets, crammed up under his bed one particularly bad night. More often that not sitting in front of his window, dazed and staring at nothing.

Some days Peter is wide alert, ready to engage and offering Tony shy, sweet smiles - others it’s just a shell who responds to commands. 

People tell Tony he’s lucky. Peter could be so much worse. Even well meaning friends like Rhodey say things like, “I’m not an expert, but this all sounds kind of expected, Tony. He’s been in the system for years. What do you think was going to happen?”

But Tony has dreams at night - the good ones where he’s flying in his suit and it’s Peter’s voice in his ear telling him about his day at school. There are also bad ones - ones where Peter never gets better and tells Tony he regrets coming to live with him. The both good and bad dream where Tony hunts down a man named Skip.

What did he think was going to happen? Contrary to popular belief, this wasn’t one of Tony’s famed lack of judgements, it wasn’t a snap decision and it wasn’t a mistake. Tony researched the kid. He read every file available. 

“But why this kid, Tony?” Pepper had asked, more than once.

“Because we get to chose our family, Pep.” He hands her the letter. He’s had it carefully preserved. It’s in small, childish handwriting. Several small drawings of Iron Man flying littered across the sides. It’s three pages long, and the last one is signed: Love, Peter. 

There’s a larger drawing of Iron Man flying away, fireworks or explosions behind him, and a small kid on his shoulders.

“Tony, you’ve received hundreds of letters like this. Thousands, probably.”

“You don’t see it yet.”

After one of the really bad first nights home, when Tony can’t get Peter to come out of his hiding spot and he knows the kid hasn’t eaten all day, Tony locks himself up in his room and watches an old video of his dad. Howard Stark is working, smiling for the camera, laying on a disgusting amount of charm for someone who pointedly ignores the little boy behind him. 

No eyes for anyone other than himself. 

It’s fine. It’s the perfect motivation to light that fire under his ass, as his father often has been in Tony’s life. He tries to let Peter set the pace, and when he asks if they’re going out, then they’re going out.

Tony emerges from his room dressed in a casual jacket, sunglasses, and ball cap. He holds up his hand for Peter to see what’s inside it, then enjoys every moment of tousling the kid’s hair back and pulling down a matching ball cap on his head. 

“We keep a low profile, yeah? No Mr. Starks out on the street, okay?”

The kid keeps close to him once they leave on foot. Peter insists there’s nowhere in particular he wants to go, but Tony can tell he’s got a lot of nervous energy, so he waves off FRIDAY’s prompt to call for Happy.

Peter naturally strays away from the big name shopping and entertainment that the tower sits in; they wind down some smaller side streets and make their way south. It’s cold enough out that Peter’s cheeks are pink, the tip of his nose a Rudolph parody, but his eyes are bright. Awake. Present. 

They reach Union Square. They’re been walking for awhile, and now there’s a protest gathered in front of them. The park is pretty packed, so when Peter gravitates closer it’s for necessity. When the boy slips his shoulder under Tony’s arm, it’s not by accident. 

Tony pulls him closer, head ducked down low so the brims of their hats touch. He can feel Peter’s heartbeat burning through the back of his hoodie and into Tony’s hand. “You okay?”

The kid gives a jittery nod, his hands pulled up into his sleeves again. They’re lightly jostled by the crowd as they break across the park and into an intersection. The sun is peeking out now, enough that Peter squints at his feet. 

Tony slips off his sunglasses and puts them gingerly on Peter’s face. He peers up at him, a toothy half smile. 

Maybe he can get away with this gift, he thinks. 

They’re on a regularly packed Manhattan street, full of Sunday brunchers and tourists, but Peter stays tucked under his arm when he doesn’t need to be, and Tony wonders if Howard Stark ever felt like a father, or even felt like a father in just the way that Tony does right now in this moment.

“Tony?” A tug at his jacket. 

“Yeah, kid?”

“I’m ready to go home.”

His home. With Tony. 

We all make choices.


End file.
